Legislating Napster

Posted on November 12, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

Here is a bill that I hope dies before becoming law. 

The U.S. House of Representatives bill (PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

If universities do not implement technologies that give students alternatives to illegal downloading, all federal financial aid for students (even students that don’t own computers) would be forfeited.

It seems to me that this legislation protects a business model instead of the rights of Americans.

Posted in copyright, edtech | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Why Blog

Posted on November 11, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

Blog is such a poor name for a powerful environment.  I wish something more powerful sounding had caught on instead of blah-ish blog.  I think we are stuck with it.

Here is a scenario I have explained hundreds of times, but I haven’t typed it here.  In the interest of archiving my thoughts forever… here goes.

A teacher asks a technology director for some help in publishing classroom material online.  Here are the things she wants:

  • Add new text and graphics to the site
  • Make changes to items that are already online
  • Make it possible for a visitor to search the whole site
  • Visitors must be able to leave comments on the site
  • Learn no HTML
  • FTP or other complicated processes are not involved

Ten years ago, the tech director would have laughed the teacher out of the room.  The only way to make web pages was to learn complicated HTML.  All the files were then transferred using FTP.  If a page needed modification, it had to be downloaded, edited and then uploaded back to the server.  Having a search engine for a site was far-fetched.  Search engines were expensive add-ons that corporate web site had.

With free blog software, like WordPress, a teacher can be given all of the above and more in only a few minutes.  In addition, templates are available that make it easy to customize the look and feel of the whole site with one click.

If you don’t have a server, there are free blogs servers available online.  I recommend that teachers use Edublogs.org because it is designed for that audience.

Blogs have brought Internet publishing to the masses.  The name may not be the greatest, but the technology behind it is empowering.

Posted in edtech | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

We’re Going Nuclear

Posted on November 10, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

With the high price of gasoline and the anticipated record cost of fuel oil, today we were tossing around alternative ideas to heating the house this winter.  Nuclear power would be the “warmest” heat and there are all kinds of tax incentives if we switch to atomic power.

A Google search gave us quite a few resources from people that have already had this idea.  In the former Soviet Union, they have nuclear powered homes, cars and even toasters.

That’s it.  We are not going to buy any more gas.  It’s just too expensive.

Posted in efficiency, leisure | Tagged | Comments Off on We’re Going Nuclear

free-reading.net

Posted on November 9, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

If you are an elementary school literacy teacher, the free-reading.net is a wiki you should see.
freereading.gif

Here is what this site is all about:

Free-Reading is an ongoing, collaborative, teacher-based, curriculum-sharing experiment. We’re looking to provide a reliable forum where teachers can openly and freely share their successful and effective methods for teaching reading in grades K-1.
Our premises are:

  • The research on how students learn to read is well-established.
  • The research on which instructional techniques work is well-understood.
  • The voices of those who know what works best — the classroom teachers — are rarely heard in instructional design.
  • The power of “we” is far greater than the power of “you” or “I.”

Resources like this are only possible because great teachers create great resources and then share them. If you have something you can add, it will only make this resource better.

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Lessig at TED

Posted on November 8, 2007 by Alvin Trusty


http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/187

Here is my favorite copyright reform advocate. Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Stanford. He is also the founder of Creative Commons and a board member of the EFF.

Posted in copyright | Tagged , , | 1 Comment